Ian McKay, "Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada’s Left History" (2005).

Ian McKay, Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada’s Left History (2005).

I’m torn about the value of this book, for a number of reasons.

1) It contains a significant material that McKay has published elsewhere. At a little more than 200 pages, much of two of the five chapters were published in 2000. That being said, these chapters had been widely recognized as important reading for scholars of 20th-century Canadian history.

2) A goodly portion of the book (the first three chapters) reads like a very general introduction to socialist/Marxist/Gramscian thought. While this is entertaining to read, and well-written, it does not seem particularly necessary to add to material that is already widely available elsewhere.

3) The fifth chapter, which ‘maps’ Canadian left history between 1890 and 1990 over five stages is an extremely interesting and helpful initial reconnaissance of a widely overlooked area of national historical experience that is often misrepresented or misunderstood when it is investigated. Of the entire book, it is this fifth chapter that makes the text memorable.

Mackay does clarify usage of a number of terms that I note here for personal reference:
1) Matrix-events: A term from the Annales school. The shock of the new. “[…A] moment that reshapes hegemony at both its profoundest structural levels and its conscious levels.” (95)

2) Moments of refusal: When the order’s appearance of permanence gives way to an appearance of historical transience, resistance which before had been silent and passive breaks out in a multitude of unexpected and often violent ways. (103)

3) Moments of supersedure: A term from Gramsci. Those times when an individuals understanding of the world and its order significantly changes, when these changes are widespread, and when the urgency of discovery compels sharing with others.

4) Moment of systematization: As the heat of the moment of supersedure passes, the knowledge must be tested against other examples, and given a common language and program. It must also be tested against and applied to past methods and concepts of resistance.

5) Formations: Systematization leads to “a way of disseminating [each left organizations’] concepts through a much wider social network.” (112) Similar to Gramsci’s ‘historic bloc’; a new historical agent, united by an overriding political objective.